We are so excited to start our next year of homeschooling – SECOND GRADE! I can’t believe my little girl is already headed in to her second grade year. Cue the tears!
I wanted to share what we are using this upcoming school year in case you are still struggling to figure out what curriculums you want to use.
So, let’s start!
LANGUAGE ARTS
Let me first say that we are not religious, at all. It’s not to say that we don’t believe or that we don’t talk about it in our way at home, it’s just that we don’t do bible studies and we want our schooling to be focused elsewhere. So we had been looking for a secular curriculum but ultimately decided on The Good and The Beautiful! We are diving in to level 2 even though my daughter almost tested into level 3. It will be a lot of review but I love how beautiful and easy the curriculum is. It is an open and go style. I do like to read ahead each week to see and get familiar with what we are doing but you definitely don’t have to.
I do recommend taking the assessment to determine what level your child is at (the levels do not correspond to grade levels necessarily).
We will also be doing the level 2 handwriting as her independent work while I play with the toddler.
MATH
We are also using The Good and the Beautiful for math! My daughter is really good at math but she stresses. She feels like it’s a race all the time to answer the fastest instead of “slow and steady”. The Good and The Beautiful’s curriculum is not overwhelming with simple daily lessons to work on. Again, my daughter actually tested in to level 3 on everything but one topic – money! I probably could have worked on money this summer and moved on to level 3 in the fall, but we prefer the less stress!
SCIENCE
This was the toughest selection for me. I went back and forth with A LOT of different curriculums. Over the summer, we are working on The Good and The Beautiful’s Marine Biology unit (FREE! You can find it here.). But ultimately we decided on Sassafras for science. It is a read aloud adventure book and both of my kids love listening to stories.
HISTORY
This was also a tough selection at first for me. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to start – US History or World History?! Once I decided on US History, it was easy to pick a curriculum. I have always loved Blossom and Root and their new history curriculum, “River of Voices“, is so inclusive and gives you the point of view from the Native Americans, African Americans and Spanish Americans.
To go along side the history curriculum, I also purchased from Evan-Moor: Plymouth Colony, Colonial America, Native Americans and American Revolution workbooks.
ART
Currently we are participating in a weekly Zoom art class but once the semester is over, I wanted to make sure we continued some sort of art study. Our homeschool room doubles as our arts and crafts room, so there is no shortage of imagination and creativity but I did want something that was instructional and less free-for-all.
I went with Blossom and Root’s “Math in Art” because after reading through the sample, I felt that I could also use these projects with my preschooler.
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Along with the above primary curriculum choices, we are also supplementing with additional work. Some of this is independent work so I can sit with my preschooler while the second grader gets some things done. We will be using: Evan-Moor Daily Writing and Reading Comprehension, Good and Beautiful Level 2 Handwriting, Our World Notebook: Science Projects, Good and Beautiful Nature Notebook, Brain Quest 2nd Grade, and Osmo Numbers game.
She also fell in love with Outschool and I let her pick a few classes each month to participate in based on what she is currently interested in learning about.
That’s it (for now!). We started our school year June 29th and so far everything has been running smooth and working well. Hopefully it continues on that same path!
Let me know what you are using this year for your kids. I love learning about other curriculums!
